I’m a bit out of the loop on WDW news, and my last trip was 2019. Is this true???
Lots of people saying the app automatically checked them out of their WDW resort before check out time, due to their location, and belongings missing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WaltDisneyWorld/comments/1iw0a2f/hotel_checkout_catastrophe/
I just skimmed through most of the comments. I suspect the geolocation thing was the manager pulling something out of their arse.
I have used the app to check out of my room the last 4 or 5 trips. Almost always , close to 11am it tells me I have already been checked out. We have always been in the room (at least one person) do I don’t know if we would be locked out before 11.
Thanks for flagging. I’m thinking of shutting off location services in MDE until 11am on checkout day.
Edit:
The ‘room safety check’ ppl walked in on a woman taking a shower, and other similar cases. Tell me why I pay a premium to stay on Disney property again?
The room safety check has become utterly ridiculous. Disney could do something about this without compromising safety and still not have these privacy intrusions a thing. My wife and I came up with three easy to implement ideas just in a short conversation.
When we were there in January, the day my wife was sick and laid up with a fever in the room, they called the room, knocked, called my phone (even though I was in the parks) and called my wife’s cell phone. Eventually my wife mustered the energy to get up and answer the door, looking dishevelled.
How can families relax in their resort, take naps, etc?
In the very least provide a way to put into the app when you do not want to be disturbed in your room each day since locking the door and hanging the do not disturb sign is meaningless to them.
Walking in when someone is showering is unacceptable. And pointless. If someone was up to something nefarious, room checks aren’t enough to stop anything anyway.
Reading through all of the posts, I get the sense that housekeeping may be the one checking people out before they are really checked out. Just a hunch!
What nefarious things are they supposedly looking for? And who are these people who pay WDW’s on-site very high rates to do nefarious stuff in the room? There are much cheaper hotels elsewhere in the area. We had one of these safety checks done on our room a few years ago … I didn’t understand it then and still don’t.
Weapons stockpiles for one. Presumably.
The security check was especially annoying pre-covid. Since then I’ve not really noticed the checks.
We have not been auto-checked out. We have been badgered - at Riverside if I’m recalling correctly - by phone calls to the room asking if we’ve checked out yet.
Just in case, one person remains in the room while luggage is being moved out of the room.
I’ve heard of DVC rooms having security checks tho we have not while staying DVC. I can’t recall a security check while we were at Riverside.
And finally, who the heck wanders around a hotel room without clothes on. 
I might be monumentally skeptical and untrusting but I don’t expect much security in a h/motel room. I don’t sweat it but there’s no real expectation.
Basically, yeah.
But it was in response to the shooting at that concert venue. Most rooms at Disney would have less opportunity for that kind of mass casualty target. Even so, they are taking every precaution not to have anything like that happen at WDW…but it is mostly for show.
Anyhow, they do safety checks everyday, even DVC. Housekeeping is good enough, then the person who comes and does a garbage check. It only escalates to calls and such if they can’t get access to the room. We are frequently in the room during the time when they would do the checks, and typically answer the door and let them know we don’t need anything. That’s usually good enough.
I am frequently just in my underwear. That’s how I sleep, and don’t bother getting dressed right away. I have no qualms being in my room without clothes on. Why not? I get some people might not want to be, but I would think it is fairly common… particularly after sleeping or showering or… after certain “other activities” one might do while on vacation. 
If while at WDW you have times for this …
or this …
then you are cheating yourself out of park time.
However, for the sake of other guests in line, this …
is an acceptable in-room activity.
Reading through the comment it appears to have nothing to do with location. The manager seems to have made that up to cover for their screw-up.
I went back and re-read. It’s not clear. But my thinking is this - give megacorp data, and they can use it against you. I work in in IT, I can definitely see beancounter managers asking to use geolocation data and AI to ‘predict’ when people are not coming back to their room and dialing autocheckout up or down to meet their internal room turnover targets. So, don’t give them the data, and they can’t use it against me.
Separately: while rereading the reddit thread I came across 2 reports of Disney doing a stealth autocheckout and assigning the room to the next guests, who then walked in on the previous guests still packing. Surreal and dystopian. Tagging @len - this isn’t right and the public should know about these aggressive Disney checkout practices.
Edit: More specific report about geolocation, from a guest at the Contemporary who was aggressively auto check out and told this by front desk staff:
They did tell me immediately about geolocation, if you drive off of your hotels property OR enter a park, you are automatically checked out of your room on the last day.
Disney managers lie all the time. They have tried to come in at 10am while we have been in the room.
My favorite manager lie (and why I am still bitter) - AKL: (eye roll) “did you request a hair dryer for your room? Those were all removed to save on electricity. You must request one. You didn’t request one? (Eye roll)
My wife and I were thinking about getting something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Additional-Unauthorized-Traveling-Apartment/dp/B082WQR3YM?th=1
(Not necessarily that exact one…but that idea.)
It would allow you to lock the door from the inside so that even the hotel staff couldn’t get in.
It wouldn’t really be of use for the automatic check-out problem…but would allow you to “protect” yourself due to a safety check happening while you were perhaps sleeping/showering/whatever.
I’m not sure much can be done about the automatic check-out issue, other than having enough people complaining (loudly) to Disney about the practice.
This seems like a computer error more than a purposeful tactic. Doesn’t housekeeping have to sign off on a room being completed before it’s put back into circulation?
Who knows exactly what shenanigans they are pulling? It’s all under the same bucket - Disney is being very aggressive with room turnover on checkout day, result will be guests being pushed out in weird ways.
Too many 1st hand reports in that thread to dismiss them - Disney does not deserve benefit of the doubt here.
Not sure if this would work for everyone, but stop at the front desk the day before you check out and request late checkout the next day. I’ve requested it several times and never been denied the request, I want to say it’ll give you another 90 minutes in your room?
OK I gotta speak up here
This thread is talking about this as if it’s a chronic, every guest every room every visit experience.
And I’m sorry it just isn’t.
Should it happen ever? No, but people – and technology – make mistakes. I have never, literally never, had one of these “safety checks”. And I have been in my room at all hours of the day and night.
I have had housekeeping knock on my door early on checkout day at times, but I kindly tell them I expect to be in the room until 11am and they do not disturb me again.
I think this is getting out of control with the escalation and I think we just need to bring the tone down a bit.
My opinion, of course.
I don’t mind housekeeping/trash as a check even tho it’s obvious what they’re really doing since DVC says after 4 days or some such. Instead we see them daily but they’re always fun.
The open the door as you knock once, speedwalk to the bathroom to glance in the tub before out the door in a flash “checks” are annoying. I suspect to everyone involved, CMs most of all.
Then something has gone wrong. It is mandatory for every room to be checked daily. We have experienced it every trip every day. We don’t notice it, of course, if they come during a time we are out of the room. (But if our garbage was collected when we got back to the room, we knew they had been there for the check.) But, for example, when we were there in September, I was working out of the room, so we were there for the check those days and had to answer the door.
I am guessing you had the checks, but they managed to find times you were out of the room.